Heavy the Beat of the Weary Waves
by Valieara
Summary: Lee wondered where her once omnipresent half smile had gone, and when. Post-Revelations, a small Lee/Laura reconcilation scene.


**Disclaimer: **I own nothing; for fun not profit; etc.

**Spoilers/Setting: **Up until season 4's _Revelations_, and assumes everyone's gotten over their intial reactions to the epic failure of Earth.

**Notes:** This was originally meant to focus more on the Lee-squick that was so evident in _Revelations_ whenever he saw his father with Laura, which I thought was hilarious. However, it turned into a nice little Lee/Laura reconciliation scene, because I've always wondered where exactly that dynamic went, and is also heavy on _The Hub's_ consequences for Laura's character. Clearly all my writing skills have gone poof (as evidenced by the very fact that I wrote that) so any and all concrit is extraordinarily welcome.

Also, the title is taken from a traditional Scottish song by the same name.

* * *

The invitation came as a presidential request from a woman who by this point was nearly family; and though Lee wouldn't have refused it in the first place, the shuttle to Colonial One wasn't optional.

Over the course of the weeks following Baltar's trial, Lee had made more than one attempt to speak to the president, and was generally barred with pithy excuses that Tory fed him with a sympathetic smile. Once, and only once, had he made it into the inner sanctity of her offices on a day when Tory was not available to protest, and Lee was too concerned with the fragility of the government to bother overmuch with decorum.

Then her eyes had been blazing at the intrusion, hiding the pain he knew from the first time around was nearly always present, and an exhaustion that hadn't let up since she'd taken the presidential oath the first time. At one point and time she might have had him sit and talk with her, if she hadn't had an overflow of work – which, being a representative on the Quorum, he knew she did.

Then again, at one point, she'd possessed a steely calm to her that hadn't raged and seethed, or as was the case now, had faded to the point of near nonexistence.

Though Lee understood this trip, this request, for the olive branch it was, this wasn't the president he wanted to confront; and he certainly didn't want to consider the long-term ramifications.

"Madam President?" he questioned through the partition.

"Yes, Mr. Adama, come in."

He did, and almost recoiled in barely contained shock. The awkwardness he'd once felt at walking in on her in her dressing gown was nothing compared to what he was feeling now.

"Thank you for seeing me, Madam President," Lee replied, automatically casting about for something, anything else to look at. He'd known when he'd first seen the wig, of course, but reality was stark without something to serve as a buffer; and the sight of Laura Roslin, indomitable to a fault, sitting bald at her desk, was something not easily reconcilable in his mind.

She nodded encouragingly, even understandingly at him. "Thank you for coming. Please, sit."

Lee did, meeting her eyes as he sank tentatively into the nearest recliner, fidgeting with his tie and straightening his jacket. She tilted her head – an idiosyncrasy he could no longer interpret – and her gaze turned inscrutable on him.

"Madam President," he started, "if you'll allow me to begin, there are a few things I've been meaning to address for a while. Firstly, I would like to apologize for my actions during Baltar's trial."

She only leaned back and shook an impatient hand at him.

"Forgotten, Mr. Adama; and forgiven. There comes a point it seems petty to hold such grudges. It's not worth the time or energy, nor is it conducive, considering your current position, to the welfare of this fleet."

Lee sensed there was more to the story, going far beyond the fact that he was his father's son. He hesitated, but nodded.

"Regarding my new position," he began again, "there was more than one time I stepped out of line."

"No, no," Roslin said quickly. "Let's be plain, here; you were right about a great many things. You weren't afraid to make me step back, to make me see another viewpoint I needed desperately to see; and for that, I am grateful."

Lee shifted, not denying or agreeing with her statement. It was so far removed from the woman he'd gotten used to in the past months, aside from one unofficial meeting in his father's quarters, after her release from the base ship and before they found Earth.

"You know, there was a time not all that long ago when your approval counted for more than just about anyone else's," he admitted.

There was a question riding silently in the thought, unspoken but still present; and he didn't have to wonder if Roslin had heard it.

"Discounting Captain Thrace, and perhaps your father," she acknowledged, but remained reserved as ever.

Lee didn't guess what she meant with the _perhaps_. His father had never admitted to being a model parent, and he took on guilt and responsibility with more vengeance than anyone Lee had ever met. Given the close nature of the relationship between his father and the president – if it was one that made Lee more than a little uncomfortable in their combined presence – it didn't surprise him that Roslin was to date on the Adama family's history.

Roslin herself had taken on a distant look, her face looking as though it wanted to contort into something harder but couldn't bring itself to, instead settling on a blanker appearance. Lee wondered where her once omnipresent half smile had gone, and when. Mysterious, yet indicative of at least a half dozen of her frames of mind, he remembered. _Captain Apollo,_ she'd say, and depending on how it was said, it could mean anything.

"I think," she began slowly in the silence, tasting the words for truth or certainty, "that we've lost ourselves in the simple act of trying to survive. I mean all of us: you, me, everyone. And I'm still trying to figure out if it's a sacrifice we have to live with not knowing we ever gave, or if there's some hope of reclamation down the road, whatever it may be.

"Some days I look in the mirror," she continued softly. "I look at myself, and I don't recognize what I see." Her gaze was blank, but steady, holding nothing but cold stars and the emptiness of space outside her window.

There was a message in it all for him – her bared head, her bared soul – and it was one he latched onto without question.

"I think, that like you said, that we're all there with you," Lee replied, and watched her eyes snap thoughtfully back to him. "And that this reclamation you're looking for isn't out of reach, if you really want it."

There was no way to tell the thoughts undoubtedly swirling in her mind, and there never had been, even in the days he'd been her military advisor and she'd been serving her first term.

Now they orbited Earth in a hopeless indirection; and Lee questioned, more than once, if they'd come so far only to jump back to square one.

Now, Roslin nodded, and gave him a genuine smile: a rarity, especially these days.

"Thank you, Delegate Apollo, for coming by."

He could recognize a dismissal when he heard one, and he wasn't willing to push these tentative boundaries just yet. He stood, and shook her proffered hand.

"Technically, considering I've given up flight status, I don't have a call sign anymore," he pointed out.

She got a look in her eye – he would hesitate to call it _maternal_ – he hadn't seen in quite some time, and her smile grew into something almost playful.

"Still has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"


End file.
